What Our Clients Say

We’ve worked with some great companies and helped them to create a better understanding of their customers

“Hiscox is a leading specialist insurer, underwriting a diverse range of personal and commercial insurance risks. We have regularly been recognised as major award winners, reflecting our investment in the profession, our excellence as a Personal Lines and SME business insurer, our customer care and excellent claims service. However we never rest on our laurels and we approached Lyn Etherington at Cape Consulting to help us make a cultural shift in our broker channel business in the UK and Ireland. The objectives we were seeking to achieve were to instill new behaviours, build even better interactions and stronger relationships with brokers and, as a result, deliver more new business opportunities and greater client retention
Lyn and her colleagues Ian and Simon did some detailed diagnostic work to get to know our business, using this knowledge to outline what we could do better. Cape helped us to produce a unique broker relationship framework and worked closely with us to develop a relationship coaching programme. They have also helped with managing this project and the regular telephone call assessments. This has brought significantly more emphasis to how we coach our people and every one in the business now has a personal KPI related to relationship behaviours. We monitor our progress against the set objectives through the framework and a quarterly dashboard. At an individual level we have seen every single underwriter in our business improve their relationship behaviours. At a bigger picture level our most recent broker ‘superb service’ survey showed our Net Promoter Score up 10 points to +62. This has genuinely transformed what we do. The ongoing support from Lyn, Ian and Simon at Cape Consulting has been first class. Thank you.” Cape’s style of intervention has ensured that our people feel engaged and committed to the new way of working; our operational management have been fully supported so that the Broker Model and how it is managed and measured is now business as usual; I am convinced that this has created a differentiated service that brokers value. ”Ross Dingwall,
Managing Director|Broker Channel

“In seeking to understand how we could grow our business through brokers, research clearly told us that brokers wanted us to demonstrate a better understanding of their business and to build stronger relationships with them. This required us to change the focus of our Broker Service Centre and to develop our people to behave in a way that delivered more individual experiences to brokers.We engaged Cape Consulting to help us on this important transformation. Their Experience Audit identified the behavioural ‘gap’ between the experience we were delivering and where we needed to be; and, their broker research fleshed out what brokers really wanted when they spoke to us. This showed our frontline people just how key their behaviour was to the broker and, more importantly, it facilitated a shift in their mind-set. The behavioural change programme that we implemented was underpinned by our Broker Experience Model – ‘Their Business: Our Focus’ – which Cape helped us to create. This Model became the cornerstone of the programme and of our ongoing call quality assessment and continuous staff development.For Allianz, Net Promoter Score® (NPS) – that is, customers’ preparedness to recommend – is a key performance indicator. This programme has directly contributed to our NPS improvement of 20 points over the past 18 months. And this has happened at a time when we have reduced our staffing numbers and contained our average handling time. We might reasonably have expected our call lengths to increase as we delivered more ‘individual’ experiences but this hasn’t been the case: staff now use the time on the phone more effectively – delivering greater value to the broker and to Allianz. The comments from our brokers speak for themselves:“When you ring Allianz it doesn’t matter who you speak to, everyone is friendly and will go out of their way to help”“I am very happy with Broker Service and their constant, happy, helpful attitudes. They are knowledgeable and always do their best to solve the issue there and then.”Cape’s style of intervention has ensured that our people feel engaged and committed to the new way of working; our operational management have been fully supported so that the Broker Model and how it is managed and measured is now business as usual; I am convinced that this has created a differentiated service that brokers value.”

Jon Dye,
General Manager,Retail|Allianz Insurance.

Nutricia – delivering Customer Service Excellence and an NPS score of 83!
“Nutricia specialises in the delivery of advanced medical nutrition for the very young, the old, and the sick. As well as being the largest specialist nutrition company in Europe, Nutricia is the market leader in the UK. Nutricia supplies high quality feeds, systems and support services to patients and health care professionals.
Nutricia’s customer service is measured by the NHS using the Net Promoter® Score (NPS), which clearly emphasises the importance that the NHS places on the customer experience.
It also provides an opportunity for us to tangibly demonstrate the quality of the patient experience that we deliver. We understood that in order to meet and exceed the expectations of the NHS, we should work with an expert consultancy that specialises in customer experience.Cape Consulting’s brief was to develop and deliver a programme for Nutricia Customer Services that would improve customer-facing behaviours and enhance the customer experience in a way that is measurable and sustainable. We started working together in December 2013, focusing on 3 key areas:1) the design and delivery of a behavioural improvement programme for our Patient Coordinators who are in contact with our patients
2) a behavioural coaching and development programme for our Team Managers
3) a coach-the-coach programme for our Customer Service Managers.The hard work has paid off as last month we achieved an NPS score of 83 which is a huge improvement from where we started and I am incredibly proud of the Customer Services team. Lyn, Ian and Sylva have been fantastic to work with and we have all felt fully supported throughout this programme. We are looking forward to 2015 with Cape!”

Catherine Shakespeare,
Head of Customer Services|Nutricia Homeward.

Baxi Makes it Simple – and achieves recognition in the Top 50 Companies for Customer Service 2014
“The Baxi Heating Customer Contact Centre is a business to business operation supporting thousands of plumbing and heating branches throughout the UK. Despite our service including a very complex and technical support as well as more general enquiries we pride ourselves in the quality of service we offer.
We realised that the level of service we provide in Customer Service directly impacts our clients’ likelihood to recommend Baxi products in the future, so we decided to take our service to the next level. Our aim was to create a sustainable behavioural change to ensure that every customer interaction was flexible, friendly and provided the customer with what they wanted the first time around.
We engaged Cape Consulting after meeting them through an event held by the organisers of the Top 50 Companies for Customer Service event and we were impressed with their approach to behavioural change. They started by performing an audit of our current customer experience and reported back with their proposals for change. This included a structured ‘customer experience model’ that clearly defined the behaviours our agents needed to deliver plus changes to our call management and coaching to support the changes in agent behaviour.
I was particularly impressed by how Cape took the time to listen and work with us in order to develop the ‘customer experience model’ that was perfectly tailored to our business and our customers’ needs as well as being practical enough to kick off in a short time frame. The ongoing support from both Ian and Lyn at Cape Consulting has been fantastic and I am proud to announce that we have successfully made it into the Top 50 in 2014. We look forward to working closely with them into the future as we strive to take our customer experience even further in support of our brand proposition: Baxi Makes it Easy.”

David Willetts,
General Manager|Baxi Genuine Parts.

“The RAC’s Delivering Exceptional Service programme is designed to drive value and loyalty from every customer interaction. Cape Consulting’s Experience Audit identified how we could create a tangible quality to the conversations we hold with customers to make them special and reinforce the RAC brand. Their customer focused training and leadership coaching techniques have created the right mindset and approach amongst our managers and front line people across all our breakdown centres.‘Delivering Exceptional Service’ has become business as usual through regular measurement and monitoring. With Cape Consulting’s expert guidance we have achieved an outstanding 80% Net Promoter® Score – amongst the very best reported by companies using this measure. We have reduced our operational costs as well as improving our customer experience – a powerful combination that is delivering tangible value to the business.”

Kate Burn,
Head of Contact Delivery| RAC

F&C Investments
“We engaged Lyn to help us achieve our key objective of providing excellent customer service.Over the last few years, her sterling work helped us to change the mindset of our people, including senior management, so that we now focus on both the experience we provide for customers and the financial return.We were delighted recently to be recognised as the UK’s no 1 Call Centre for Customer Service – Lyn and Cape Consulting definitely helped us to get there. A very talented lady and an expert in her field – highly recommended!”

Cheryl Robertson
Director Retail Client Services

Hibernian General Insurance
“Measuring Net Promoter Score in isolation is of limited benefit – just a snapshot of the customer view. Two factors make Cape Consulting stand out from the norm. They took the trouble to get to know my business, using this knowledge to inform their analysis. Their methodology combines the theory of NPS with the practical “Loyalty Building Experiences” to give me concrete steps to improve my processes and interactions with our customers.Generally speaking I am not a fan of consultants. I am a fan of Lyn Etherington!”

Royal Bank of Scotland
“The Bank launched Helpful Banking in 2010 and since then we have worked in partnership with Cape Consulting to make it become a reality in Telephony. Cape Consulting helped us diagnose what our front-line staff needed to do better to deliver the Helpful Banking promise and worked closely with us to develop a behavioural change programme that all of our staff have attended. They helped us modify how we assess our calls and developed our team leaders to coach improvements in a way that has really changed how we operate. Our Customer Charter promises ‘Friendly and Helpful’ staff and as at September 2011, our customers rated our Telephony advisers at over 92% on being both ‘Friendly’ and ‘Helpful’. In addition, we are extremely proud to have made the Top 10 in the 2011 Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service and to have been rated top bank and top large call centre – a huge achievement. I am convinced that our partnership with Cape Consulting has had a positive impact and helped us achieve our aim of bringing Helpful Banking to life.”

Jon Cooper,
Head of Telephony Sales | Royal Bank of Scotland

Virgin Atlantic
“Customer service is already a passion at Virgin Atlantic and although we have only been working with Cape Consulting for a short time the Coaching for Service Excellence Programme™, by energising our people and helping to focus their potential, looks set to deliver lasting results that our customers will notice.”

Julie Robinson
Director of Service Delivery|Virgin Atlantic

Bank of Ireland
“The Bank hired Cape Consulting to give clarity about service and measure performance, to define what good service looks like and what you need to do to deliver it. They helped set our standards for excellent service and designed training programmes to ensure we met them. Our long-term commitment to building superior customer service, initiated with Cape, has so far brought a 15-point improvement in customer satisfaction and helped improve staff engagement.”

Brian Lande
Programme Manager | Customer Service Programme

Norwich Union
“Customer loyalty is absolutely central to our overall strategic development. This has been a truly transforming initiative; not only transforming the quality of the customer relationship but also the enjoyment call centre agents find in their work. When we first met Cape Consulting they emphasised the commercial benefits of their work and we have found this initiative to be a highly effective one for us. Sales are up by 14%, failure demand is down by 20%, motivation is up and more customers are willing to recommend us to others.”

John Willmott,
Director of Operational Change

Shipowners’ Protection
“Cape Consulting transformed our understanding of how all staff could contribute to the development of a focused service culture throughout the company. They were rigorous and challenging, yet supportive, throughout the process.”

Charles Hume,
Chief Executive | Shipowners’ Protection Ltd

Pitcher & Piano
“I have found Cape Consulting to be a great company to use and work with. I have used their services for several years now and will continue to do so. The professionalism and attention to detail is consistent and a real credit to them. Their services come highly recommended from me and they have proven to be a great asset to what I do with Pitcher & Piano’s Academy programme.”

Jon Lewis,
Training and Recruitment Manager | Pitcher & Piano

McCarthy & Stone
“We achieved a clean sweep in the latest House Building Federation’s Survey with a first in every question! The survey is carried out on the HBF’s behalf by the National House Building Federation and is undertaken amongst home buyers of 24 different companies.. A lot of our success is down to Cape Consulting and the attitudes that have been developed within McCarthy & Stone over the last seven or eight years.”

Derek Field,
TDerek Field, Regional Director|McCarthy & Stone

Citroën UK Limited
“Citroën UK is committed to implementing programmes across its dealer network aimed at improving quality and customer service. Cape Consulting’s Service Performance Measurement System™ has received far greater buy-in and support from our dealers than any other programme and this has led to sustainable improvements in the service we deliver to our customers.”

Bill Jeffries,
National Dealer Training Manager|Citroën UK Limited

Portman Building Society
“We could have designed our customer satisfaction measures based on what we thought we should ask, but we recognised the importance of developing these measures around what our customers really wanted. The initial investment in customer insight undertaken by Cape Consulting was a very important stage in developing our customer service proposition and the results have been very beneficial.”

SunGard Vivista
“The Cape Consulting insight into what our customers value about our services and our people has helped us to develop our strategic approach in the managed services area of our business. We are sure this will reap benefits in terms of retained business and new customers.Their in depth and detailed findings give us clarity of direction and has generated internal support for change. We appreciated their professional style and have enjoyed working with them.”